Liam Neeson has put his acting career on hold following the tragic death this week of his wife Natasha Richardson after a skiing accident.

Neeson had been enjoying a career boost after action thriller Taken, in which the 56-year-old Ulster-born actor played a former spy searching for his kidnapped daughter, hit the US box-office No 1 last month. It has so far raked in $202m (£140m) around the world, vastly recouping its relatively modest €30m (£28m) budget.

Neeson, who has been a sought-after name ever since Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List catapulted him into the Hollywood A-list in 1993, had been due to reunite with the director on Lincoln, the long-gestating biopic of the 16th US president. The actor is attached to play the the Great Emancipator in the film, which would focus on the civil war years. But although imdb.com lists that film as being in pre-production and has a release date of 2011, the Hollywood Reporter suggests work has not yet begun.

Of more pressing concern is Atom Egoyan's Chloe, from whose Toronto set Neeson rushed to be at his wife's bedside. He was starring opposite Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried as a man whose wife suspects him of having an affair. It is unclear how many of Neeson's scenes have been completed on the project, which began shooting last month, or whether production can continue without him.

Neeson was also being tipped to star in the thriller Unknown White Male, about a doctor visiting Berlin who suffers a mysterious injury that puts him in a coma. When he awakes, he discovers someone else has stepped into his shoes.

In the meantime, two films which the actor had already completed are likely to hit cinemas this year, though neither yet has a distribution deal. Oliver Hirschbiegel's Sundance hit Five Minutes of Heaven stars Neeson as a former IRA man seeking forgiveness for his actions during the troubles, while the indie horror After.Life sees him as a sinister funeral director with apparent powers over the dead.